People Keep Saying the 2024 Election Reminds Them of 1968. OK, Fine, but What Are They Taking Away from That Comparison?
Looking back on it, who was right in '68: The antiwar protesters or Richard Nixon?
The incumbent Democratic president is unpopular, particularly among young voters, who don’t like his handling of a war; many in his party don’t want him to run again. The Republicans plan to re-nominate an off-putting law-and-order candidate who lost the GOP’s hold on the White House the last time he topped his party’s ticket. A third-party candidate threatens to spoil the election for Democrats. Robert Kennedy is running for president. College campuses are buzzing with unrest. And protesters are poised to descend upon—and potentially disrupt—the Democratic National Convention, which will be held in Chicago.
That may be a description of what’s happening this year in 2024, but it’s causing a lot of people to have flashbacks to 1968.
The comparison has put Democrats on edge. In many ways, the Democratic Party and the American liberal project remain haunted by the events of 1968. Over the past fifty-six years, Democrats have tried putting that election behind them. Many even came to believe a new political day had dawned and that the stereotypes that had defined the parties since then had finally faded away. But the eerie similarities between 2024 and 1968 have led some to argue Democrats are courting a repeat of that election and that November’s results may once again set the Democratic Party on a path to political obsolescence. Heed the lessons of 1968, they warn Democrats, before it is too late.
But what lessons should we learn from 1968?
It’s worth revisiting that fateful year to better understand why it resonates so much with political observers today. The parallels are striking. As they say, history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
Nineteen sixty-eight was a disaster for the Democratic Party. The Civil Rights Movement had already fractured the party’s New Deal coalition. The surprise Tet Offensive and the wider war in Vietnam—now at its height—blew the party apart. Assassinations roiled the nation. Cities burned. Activists grew more strident (and often more militant) in their demands, which seemed to multiply by the day. All of this was set against an emergent youth-driven anti-establishment counterculture that challenged the values and conventions of mainstream American life. Democrats found themselves at the center of the political storm.
Faced with plummeting poll numbers and a spirited antiwar primary campaign waged by Eugene McCarthy, incumbent Democratic President Lyndon Johnson chose not to run for re-election. That opened the door for antiwar candidate Robert Kennedy to enter the race, but he was assassinated following the California primary in early June. The Democrats would ultimately hand their party’s nomination to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a liberal stalwart from Minnesota who was nevertheless too closely associated with Johnson and the Democratic establishment for many antiwar voters.
The Democratic Convention in Chicago was riven with turmoil. Antiwar protests (some of which reached inside the convention hall) drew as much attention as the events on the floor, where Democrats were still trying to coalesce around a nominee. Eventually, during what is most accurately described as a police riot, the Chicago PD confronted the protesters in the streets, firing tear gas at them and beating them with clubs. The scenes of disorder further divided the party and shocked Americans, a majority of whom sided with the police. The Democratic Party appeared in complete disarray.
The disorder at the Democratic convention, as well as the rioting that occurred in inner city neighborhoods following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. earlier in April, buttressed the campaign of Republican nominee Richard Nixon. Nixon ran for president in 1968 promising to restore “law and order” to the nation. That slogan was aimed at whom Nixon would call in 1969 the “silent majority,” that segment of Americans who believed antiwar demonstrators, liberal activists, and both the militant and peaceful wings of the Civil Rights Movement had gone too far. Nixon hoped to draw conservative white southerners upset with desegregation and disgusted with the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights into the Republican Party, but the dog whistle rhetoric of his “southern strategy” played well with white voters throughout the nation. Nixon was far from a beloved political figure—he was awkward, uncharismatic, and not very personable—but he stood up for “middle America” and promised stability in tumultuous times.
Nixon began the general election with a big lead, as Humphrey suffered defections from both the left- and right-wings of the Democratic Party. A third-party campaign launched by the pro-segregation Democratic governor of Alabama George Wallace drew a significant number of working-class votes away from Humphrey (although Wallace may also have kept some of those voters from siding with Nixon.) But Humphrey did end up closing the gap after Wallace’s campaign faltered and Humphrey himself called for (and received from Johnson) a halt in the bombing of North Vietnam. Near the end of October, a peace deal even appeared within reach. But it was too little too late for the Democrats: While Humphrey was crushed in the Electoral College, he only lost the popular vote by 0.7%.
Nineteen sixty-eight marked the end of Democratic dominance of American politics. By 1980, conservatism was ascendant and liberalism was on the defensive. Americans came to regard the Republican Party as the United States’ “default” party, the governing coalition most associated with mainstream American values, a prosperous economy, a strong foreign policy, and limited government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party, still suffering from the hit it took in 1968, was viewed as too soft, permissive, and irresponsible, a collection of outsiders and special interests that courted chaos.
Democrats have spent much of the past 50-60 years attempting to rehabilitate the party’s post-1968 image. There is a certain sensitivity among Democrats that if the policies they propose look too much like a Great Society program, if they evince too much concern for racial and social justice, if they’re too soft on crime, if they’re not tough enough with foreign threats, or if they get too cozy with lefty activists and the causes they promote, Republicans will conjure up the spirits of 1968 by painting them as radical liberals, socialists, terrorists, etc., and voters will quickly reject them. Republicans, of course, will do that regardless, but Democrats still go to great lengths to insulate themselves from those charges so they have evidence they’re not as crazy as Republicans say they are.
The fever of 1968 began to break in the mid-00s as George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency discredited the conservative political movement and redeemed his liberal critics. Democrats became more willing to, if not necessarily identify as liberals, at least rally around ideas promoted by liberals. But even after Trump’s calamitous presidency, which exposed the GOP as an utterly irresponsible political party unfit for governing, the stereotypes of the parties forged in 1968 retain much of their political punch. Despite events that suggest otherwise, there is just a sense that Republicans bring stability, order, virtue, and discipline to American society, while Democrats invite instability, disorder, licentiousness, and tumult. This feeling is heightened when the nation feels ill at ease. As Bill Clinton said following the Democrats’ disappointing 2002 midterm elections, which occurred after 9/11 and during the run-up to the war in Iraq, “When people feel uncertain, they’d rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right.”
So where does that leave us today? Why are so many political observers suggesting Democrats have reached another 1968 moment?
Like LBJ and Humphrey, Biden leads an unpopular Democratic administration with solid liberal credentials that many young liberal voters have nonetheless grown disillusioned with. Of particular concern is Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, which, like the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, many young voters consider unjust. College campuses are once again the site of protests, which have led to confrontations with the police. There’s even the possibility protesters will disrupt the Democratic National Convention, which is scheduled to be held in, of all places, Chicago.
The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is a loathsome figure like Richard Nixon; the two men even share a “dirty trickster” in Roger Stone. Like Nixon, Trump appeals to a white “silent majority” of Americans with a promise to restore “order” to a nation where crime and social unrest has spun out of control. Also similar to Nixon, Trump’s rhetoric is a not-so-silent dog whistle that preys on racial anxiety, this time connected to the Black Lives Matter movement, the “woke” left, and immigration. Trump hopes to peel white working-class voters away from Biden just as Nixon did in 1968.
There is also a spoiler candidate like George Wallace—of all people, Robert Kennedy, Jr.—who threatens to siphon votes away from Biden (although he may also end up drawing votes from Trump.) As it was fifty-six years ago, pundits expect the election too be close and that ongoing social unrest over the war in Gaza may not only cost Biden the presidency but result in a scenario that breaks the Democratic Party and sends it into political exile.
But let’s not get too carried away here.
First of all, the United States is not directly engaged in a war. There is no draft, and forty-five American soldiers are not dying on a daily basis. While there are active social movements in the United States today, some of which focus on matters of race and inclusion, the political atmosphere is not nearly as charged as it was in the late 1960s. There are no race riots, no active radical left-wing revolutionary groups, no widespread protest movements beyond the Gaza demonstrations (which are actually fairly limited in scope and less confrontational by the standards of the 1960s.) There is no discernable countercultural movement thumbing its nose at the establishment. Compared to the 1960s, our times are rather tame.
The Democratic Party is not divided the way it was in 1968. Unlike LBJ, Biden did not face a serious primary challenger. There are no major issues like war or civil rights fracturing the Democratic coalition. Young liberal voters are unhappy with Biden, but at the same time, the left-wing politicians those voters would most likely identify with—legislators like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—have lined up behind the president. One could even make the argument the Republicans are more divided than the Democrats.
There is social strife. The country is polarized politically and culturally. It does sometimes feel like the nation is coming apart at the seams. It’s that mood of division and irreconcilability—the sense that the United States is two nations politically and socially that can’t communicate across their differences—that is perhaps most reminiscent of 1968.
But again, those differences are not based on issues as volatile as those the nation faced in the 1960s. That is not to diminish the significance of issues like income inequality, racial and gender inequality, climate change, immigration, or gun control, or to marginalize activists working on those issues. It’s simply to acknowledge that political activism and political debate is a constant feature of American life. The presence of protests or heated political disputes does not automatically plunge the nation back into the super-charged political atmosphere of the 1960s. At the same time, I don’t want to suggest there aren’t issues that might heighten political tensions in the country. Abortion can certainly ignite passions on both sides of the debate. It’s also understandable that people would become alarmed when a former president who attempted to undermine an election by siccing a mob on Congress says he would like to serve as “dictator for a day” if re-elected.
But we should also be on the lookout for manufactured political outrage that fosters division. For example, the “law and order” presidential candidate—the guy who sent that mob to the Capitol, the one who’s currently staring down 94 criminal indictments—keeps insisting crime is out of control when violent crime rates are actually plummeting. Let’s also not forget the lies Trump told about the 2020 election that he used to incite an insurrection. More recently, Trump has turned to increasingly overheated, apocalyptic, and fascistic rhetoric to portray the nation as a liberal hellscape, weaponize people’s grievances, and enlist his followers in a do-or-die struggle against his political enemies. It doesn’t matter to Trump if his words are reckless or inaccurate. They’re designed to foment division and ratchet up the political tension.
All of which leads me to believe Americans have taken away the wrong lessons from 1968. There’s a reflexive belief that protests and demonstrations (specifically of the left-wing variety) are inherently bad, that they are too disruptive and divisive, and that Democrats are far too tolerant of those who disturb the political peace. Scrutinize that assumption, though. It is true protests sometimes go too far in terms of both message and tactics. Nor would I insist we should automatically support the causes of all protesters.
But looking back on 1968, it wasn’t LBJ, Richard Nixon, or Chicago Mayor Richard Daley who was right that year, but the antiwar demonstrators, the people who were protesting a war that would claim the lives of over 58,000 Americans and quite possibly millions of Vietnamese, a war the American government secretly knew it had no hope of winning. The lesson shouldn’t be that Americans ought to regard political protests as inherently destabilizing but that we should instead take them and their causes more seriously.
Political observers like to frame the election of 1968 as a cautionary tale for Democrats, who were said to have split their coalition and alienated middle America by sliding to the left and bringing themselves closer to the views of civil rights and antiwar activists. But again, history has vindicated the civil rights and antiwar movements. The Democratic Party became a better party by making this shift. I would think political observers would be more interested not in chastising Democrats for blowing the 1968 election but in figuring out why so many voters abandoned the party for doing the right thing. It seems there’s a lesson for voters in there about what parties deserve their support and why: That right and wrong do actually matter more in the long run than perceptions of strength and weakness.
Because if there’s another lesson to take away from 1968, it’s to not hand the presidency to someone like Richard Nixon. Nixon is admittedly a complicated political figure. He was (begrudgingly) a more liberal president than most give him credit for, but tonally, he was the first modern conservative president, a politician who thrived by exploiting the resentments and reactionary impulses of white Americans. He expanded and prolonged the war in Vietnam and timed its ending so that the 1972 election (which he won) occurred before the inevitable fall of South Vietnam. Nixon also had a rotten personality—power-hungry, insecure, bitter, paranoid, vengeful—that led him to abuse the presidency and resulted in his downfall in the Watergate scandal. Americans may have been mad at Democrats in 1968, but Nixon didn’t have the solutions the country sought. He only fed that anger.
Hunter S. Thompson, that gonzo philosopher of fear and loathing in America, once wrote of Tricky Dick
It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America’s answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close…
Over 37 million Americans watched the events of 1968 unfold and concluded they wanted that monster in the White House. That was a mistake. We can learn from that, though. As I wrote earlier, history doesn’t always repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes, so forgive me for observing that Thompson’s description of Nixon sounds an awful lot like Trump. If Nixon wasn’t fit to be president, then Trump definitely isn’t. In the year 2024, we finally have a chance to get the history lesson of 1968 right.
Signals and Noise
2024 Presidential Election
Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei of Axios report strategists in both parties believe the 2024 election will come down to “6% of voters in six states.”
The Washington Post reports the Trump campaign has thrown out a GOP plan to build up a massive ground game in the states in favor of a “leaner,” “more efficient” campaign operation, worrying state GOP officials.
Nikki Haley’s “zombie campaign” picked up 20% of the vote in the Indiana Republican primary this week. She won around 30% of the vote in the Indianapolis suburbs.
Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow of the Washington Post report that Don Trump recently told a group of oil executives during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago that they should raise $1 billion for his campaign given how beneficial his policies would be for their industry.
During an interview about abortion rights with a Michigan television station, Trump called the GOP the “party of fertilization.” He also told a rally in New Jersey that Biden was “surrounded by fascists.”
Ben Terris and Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post take a peak inside the surreal world of Mar-a-Lago.
Biden visited Wisconsin to announce a $3.3 billion investment by Microsoft in an AI data center at the site of the proposed $10 billion Foxconn facility that Trump declared the “eighth wonder of the world” but was never built.
Biden is set to quadruple tariffs on Chinese EVs.
By James Surowiecki of The Atlantic: “The Biggest Way That Elections Have Consequences” (“Presidents typically get blamed for economic problems that, in reality, they can do little about, and they get credit for economic successes that they had little to do with. But in the case of the noncompete rule, Biden really does deserve credit. That illustrates a rather neglected fact of American politics: The character of the presidential administration that gets to run the regulatory agencies of government can have a tremendous effect on economic policy and on Americans’ everyday lives.”)
From last week, Alabama approved legislation to ensure Joe Biden got on the state’s general election ballot. The state’s certification deadline fell before the Democratic Convention, and it initially appeared Republicans weren’t interested in adjusting the date.
Meanwhile, the Ohio State Legislature still can’t figure out how to get Joe Biden on its general election ballot, with Republicans continuing to play games with the matter. Said Democratic House Minority Leader Allison Russo, “I think we've officially sunk lower than Alabama at this point.”
Trump’s Legal Woes
AP has a rundown of last week’s events in Trump’s hush money trial, which included testimony from Stormy Daniels.
The Trump-appointed judge in his classified documents case has indefinitely delayed the start of the trial.
Paul Kiel of ProPublica and Russ Buettner of the New York Times found Trump used a shady accounting tactic to claim improper tax breaks on his Chicago skyscraper that could now leave him on the hook for $100 million.
Campaign Finance
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reports the Federal Election Commission issued an advisory opinion that allows federal candidates to raise unlimited amounts of money for ballot measures in which those candidates are on the ballot. That would allow Joe Biden to raise money for abortion rights groups in Nevada, Arizona, and Florida, who could use that money to boost turnout or message against Republicans.
David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post reports on a DC-based Trump-allied nonprofit that has funneled over $3 million to corporations led by the group’s leaders or relatives.
Congress
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia hasbacked off her threat to vacate the Speaker.Nevermind! Greene sprung a surprise motion to vacate House Speaker Mike Johnson Wednesday afternoon, but 163 Democrats joined 191 Republicans (many of whom booed Greene) to keep him in the post. Thirty-two Democrats voted to remove him. Only 11 Republicans voted with Greene, which would have been enough to knock Johnson out if Democrats hadn’t come to his rescue. Despite stopping Greene, Marianna Sotomayor of the Washington Post writes most House Republicans think hardline conservatives like Greene will continue to cause chaos.Sotomayor also reports many in the House admit the narrow House Republican majority coupled with Republican dissension has effectively put Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in charge of the chamber.
Michael C. Bender and Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times find congressional Republicans are having a really hard time saying they’ll accept the outcome of the 2024 election.
Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Virginia claimed in a closed door meeting that the KKK is the “military wing of the Democratic Party.”
State and Local Government
The state Republican Committee of Georgia voted to remove its first vice chairman after they learned he had voted illegally nine times since 2008.
A Virginia schoolboard reversed a 2020 decision and restored the names of Confederate leaders to its schools.
International News
The Biden administration paused an arms shipment to Israel to signal its unhappiness with Israel’s decision to carry out military operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Biden later stated he would not provide Israel with offensive weapons they could use in an attack on the city.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied to Biden by declaring Israelis were ready to “fight with their fingernails.”
By Alex Shephard of The New Republic: “Netanyahu is Humiliating Biden” (“Netanyahu has, time and again, snubbed American presidents and taken whatever action he sees as being in his best interest. Instead of recognizing this, Biden [again, literally] embraced Netanyahu, foolishly thinking he could influence his actions. In response, Netanyahu and his allies have consistently made a fool out of Biden, happily accepting his support while grousing whenever his administration has the gall to take any minor action aimed at pressuring the country to end the war, limit civilian deaths, or even ensure that basic humanitarian aid can reach Gaza.”)
By Thomas Friedman of the New York Times: “Why the Campus Protests are So Troubling” (“My problem is not that the protests in general are ‘antisemitic’ — I would not use that word to describe them, and indeed, I am deeply uncomfortable as a Jew with how the charge of antisemitism is thrown about on the Israel-Palestine issue. My problem is that I am a hardheaded pragmatist who lived in Beirut and Jerusalem, cares about people on all sides and knows one thing above all from my decades in the region: The only just and workable solution to this issue is two nation-states for two indigenous peoples. If you are for that, whatever your religion, nationality or politics, you’re part of the solution. If you are not for that, you’re part of the problem.”)
Russia appears to be launching a new offensive in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. Ukraine had recaptured this territory in the fall of 2022. Russia’s goal may be to create a slim buffer region to prevent shelling of Russian territory. Ukraine has rushed troops from other parts of the front line to shore up defenses in Kharkiv.